Looking for help with today’s Easy, Medium and Hard NYT Pips puzzles? Whether you’re after a nudge in the right direction or just want to compare notes, below you’ll find everything you need to solve each of today’s Pips plus a full walkthrough for today’s
It’s the last Monday of July already, and soon enough it’ll be August. Where I live, that means school is almost back in session for my youngest, who starts his Junior year of high school. That’s such a crazy thought, I’ve decided to stop thinking about it immediately and grab this pile of dominoes instead.
Looking for Sunday’s Pips? Read our guide right here.
How To Play Pips
In Pips, you have a grid of multicolored boxes. Each colored area represents a different “condition” that you have to achieve. You have a select number of dominoes that you have to spend filling in the grid. You must use every domino and achieve every condition properly to win. There are Easy, Medium and Difficult tiers.
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Here’s an example of a difficult tier Pips:
As you can see, the grid has a bunch of symbols and numbers with each color. On the far left, the three purple squares must not equal one another (hence the equal sign crossed out). The two pink squares next to that must equal a total of 0. The zig-zagging blue squares all must equal one another. You click on dominoes to rotate them, and will need to since they have to be rotated to fit where they belong.
Not shown on this grid are other conditions, such as “less than” or “greater than.” If there are multiple tiles with > or < signs, the total of those tiles must be greater or less than the listed number. It varies by grid. Blank spaces can have anything. The various possible conditions are:
- = All pips must equal one another in this group.
- ≠ All pips must not equal one another in this group.
- > The pip in this tile (or tiles) must be greater than the listed number.
- < The pip in this tile must be less than the listed number.
- An exact number (like 6) The pip must equal this exact number.
- Tiles with no conditions can be anything.
In order to win, you have to use up all your dominoes by filling in all the squares, making sure to fit each condition. Sometimes there’s only one way to solve the puzzle. Other times, there can be two or more different solutions. Play today’s Pips puzzle here.
Today’s Pips Solutions And Walkthrough
Below are the solutions for the Easy and Medium tier Pips. After that, I’ll walk you through the Hard puzzle. Spoilers ahead.
Today’s Easy Pips
Today’s Medium Pips
Hard Pips Walkthrough And Solution
Here’s today’s Hard Pips:
I”m thinking this Hard Pips is a Saint Bernard puppy. I’m just getting that vibe here. There’s no really perfect place to start, especially since we only have one double. That’s a clue, of course, and it clues us into the puppy’s snout which is the only place where a double is totally necessary. The problem is, the rest of our dominoes can be used in lots of different ways, but as far as I can tell only one way is the right way. You’ll also need every blank domino for a 0 tile or group, so they can’t fit into any > < or = groups.
Step 1
Start with the 4/2 domino from Pink 4 into Purple 3 and the 6/1 from Dark Blue = into the next Purple 3 tile. The 6/0 goes directly below that from Dark Blue = into Orange 0 and the 0/0 domino goes in the remaining Orange 0 tiles.
Step 2
Next, place the 0/1 domino from Blue 0 into Purple 4 and the 3/2 domino from Purple 4 into Pink =. The 6/2 domino goes from Dark Blue = into Pink 2 and the 2/0 domino goes from Pink 2 up into Green 0.
Step 3
Place the 2/5 domino from Pink = down into Orange > 4 and the 1/3 next to that from Blue 2 down into Dark Blue =. The 1/5 domino goes from Blue 2 into Purple = and the 4/5 domino goes from Blue 4 down into Purple =.
Solution
Place the 5/0 from Purple = down into Green 0 and the 0/3 from Green 0 into Dark Blue =. The 5/3 domino goes from Pink > 4 into Dark Blue = and the 4/0 domino goes from Orange 4 over into the one and only free tile. And that’s that!
I definitely had to start all over with this because I got the first part right, mostly, but I was using 5’s in the Dark Blue = on the left and then 3’s in Pink = and eventually that just didn’t pan out so it was back to the drawing board.
How’d you do on today’s Pips?
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